I primarily am PVE focused, never really cared to do much PVP in this game so that's where I base most of my decisions off of.
Elemental-
Unrelenting storm sounds pretty hot, raid buffed I imagine most would get ~40 mana/5. Since they clearly don't want to give shamans a spirit based regen in combat this is probably one of my favorite new talents to hear about. Totem of wrath and the new wrath of air totem finally gives us a real reason to be with the casters. But who knows where you'll want your shamans when you'll only have 2-3 in a 25 man raid.
Restoration-
Nature's blessing looks nice adding roughly 100 to healing and damage but you can't get the full talent if you're getting unrelenting storm. Earth shield seems pretty worthless with only a 30% chance to avoid interruption. You can't exactly chain cast it as it costs 600 mana as well. Finally a talent to improve chain heal as well, too bad by the time expansion comes out end game raiders probably won't be wearing much TS to combine with the 3 piece bonus. Water shield, just another example of not wanting to give shamans spirit based mana regen. For 50 mana you get 285 mana back when all the globes expire which is a nice return. I'm guessing this won't stack with lightning shield so no 8/9 earthshatter bonus with it.
Enhancement-
I know from a raiding perspective I don't give two squats about duel wield and last I checked there's not a lot of shaman gear with enough strength to make Shamanistic Rage worthwhile. A shaman using 2 fast weapons could keep unleashed rage up quite a bit in a rogue group with windfury it seems this would be a good boost to overall DPS. Bloodlust cost 750 mana(roughly 10% of my mana when I'm raid buffed) which seems a little excessive given the 10 minute cooldown. Bloodlust + shamanistic rage + imp weapon totems and I'm sure the rogues would give me sex though.
It seems like blizzard is really giving us some valuable raid tools that aren't based solely in the resto tree and actually benefit more than just melee. Given what you guys have seen how will you spec? I know I'll be going 25/0/36 personally
I'm probably going to drop mana tide and pick up duel weild because holding two one hand healing weapons will be a huge buff, on top of two +55 healing or whatever is good then and two Brilliant Mana Oils it will be a pretty huge buff.
Also the enhancement talents will help a ton with levelling. I will probably feel it out with this spec then if needed move to a more raid centric one, possibly changing around some of the enhance talents to be more beneficial in raids.
For pve I don't think it's worth giving up nature's blessing for unrelenting storm, so if you give up unrelenting storm which you need 25 points to get then you basically have the points to go crazy in restoration. Like so:
Not really sold on lightning overload though, I'm not a big fan of small chance, insta win abilities. So I might instead go for some points in elemental precision or focused mind.
Restoration-
Nature's blessing looks nice adding roughly 100 to healing and damage but you can't get the full talent if you're getting unrelenting storm. Earth shield seems pretty worthless with only a 30% chance to avoid interruption. You can't exactly chain cast it as it costs 600 mana as well.
Similar to concentration aura that paladins have, it likely stacks with other interrupt prevention talents including the 70% many casters get so as to provide 100% interrupt prevention.
Seeing the Shaman talents makes me want to reroll.
Widow's Embrace + Hammer of the Twisting Nether + 2 healing power is just over 500 healing 0_o
Don't forget the x2 Brilliant Mana Oils :D I've jokingly said they should replace Stormstrike with Dual Wield for a long time now, and the fact that it's in makes me REALLY want to play my old Shaman.
A 0/31/21+ healing Shaman that melees in between casts would be interesting. Dual Weilding two healing weapons would be worth Nature's Blessing, I think.
A full (44) Enhancement Shaman can go into the Elemental tree for Clearcasting and 2/3 Elemental Devestation OR Restoration for Totemic Mastery and Nature's Guidance. I wonder how viable spamming rank 1 shocks to for Clearcasting/Elemental Devestation procs would be. Elemental Devestation would give more Unleashed Rage procs too. It's all very synergized.
Elemenetal - 40/0/21, focusing on mana saving, can actually prove to be the first possibility of shaman sustained spell DPS. Right now, gear doesn't support it, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens. Until then, it still remains our most effective PvP tree, and it does a terrific job improving our spell damage.
Resto- as listed is a HUGE buff to our raid healing role, as it should be. 30% of intellect to dmg/healing means (assuming 400 int at 70 with gear) +120. 20% to Chain heal. Earth Shield doesn't have a listed cooldown. I reserve judgement on it until we find out. I would assume it's 10 minutes, in which case its use would have to be determined through experience.
Enhancement - I am impressed. Note that the tooltip on Stormstrike says "with all equipped weapons". If they allow us to cast our weapon buffs on both weapons, DW enhancement may become a force to be reckoned with. The mental quickness reduction of instant spell mana cost by 6% and the 41 point talent of mana regen lets me know that Blizzard has finally come to realize the biggest deficiency with Enhancment and hybridization: mana. Perhaps the die-hard melee shamans will also come to accept our complete dependence on mana.
The expansion could be the growth our class needed as hybrids. We will have to wait and see.
Wrath of Air totem - the +dmg totem is a great boon, BUT IT'S YET ANOTHER AIR TOTEM. Looks like group composition is going to be key. WF for a DPS warrior group, GoA for standard DPS, and Wrath of Air for caster DPS. Welcome to our post expansion niche, boys.
Fire Elemental Totem - The new fire totem looks really neato, and I'm curious to see what it really does. Does it cast an AoE from range? The listed tooltip seems to suggest it. Does it gain damage from our +dmg? Does it gain aggro? Does it have HP, or is the totem its only weakness? Fire totem talent seems a LOT better now. 20 min cooldown suggests a high power level
Bloodlust - yay! More raid niche.
Water Shield - Now THIS is creativity. Well done. If we can have Earthen Shield, Water Shield, and Lightning Shield at the same time....
Earth Elemental Totem - Just like the fire counterpart, what does this really do? 20 min cooldown suggests a high power level
Overall, I think the improvements to our damage capabilities will allow our different possible specs to define us better, instead of Resto or don't raid. I WELCOME paladins to the horde. Let em heal imo, let the shamans be the ultimate DPS enchancer.
3 shields, 2 elemental totems, raid DPS talents, so far so good!
I have yet to play a Shaman past level 38 so please bear with me here a sec, and please flame me for my own good if I'm missing something big.
The new wording of Stormstrike ("Instantly attack with all equipped weapons.") to go along with Dual Wield has me wondering what kind of burst damage a well-geared Enhancement Shaman can pull off. Two white damage hits for main and off-hand, a 20% increased Earth Shock followed by, say, an NS-Chain Lightning with 20% increased damage, plus possible Windfury procs off the Stormstrike white hits and possible crits on all of it... Within like 3-4 seconds, you can do an obscene amount of damage, albeit for a ridiculous amount of mana. Obviously this will have extremely limited utility, but I imagine it would be rather fun to do once in a while.
I think they will add "Main Hand" keyword on the healing/dmg weapons.
The elemental tree is still selfish except for the 41 talent point.
The enhancement tree is lovable ( dual wielding fist weapon with bloodlust, a dream comes true )
The restoration tree is a question mark for me. I really don't understand Earth shield and his usefulness.
The main question from me is if a 40 Enhancement 21 Restoration Shaman build can still handle raid healing by dual-wielding two healing weapons. The 2nd 1-hander makes up for Purification, but the shaman will be missing out on Unrelenting Storm/Nature's Blessing, plus all the little Restoration talents like Healing Way and Mana Tide totem.
I think I'm reading Earth Shield different from how a lot of people are. My interpretation is that you cast it on a target, and it works like Lightning Shield or Water Shield, except that instead of doing damage or returning mana, it heals when a charge goes off. So it's a pre-cast reactive heal. The key question is its magnitude and whether it benefits from +healing gear, but conceptually, how is that not very useful? I think that as described it specifically has no cooldown, but you can only put it on one person at a time.
It seems like an incredibly useful raid ability to put on a MT, no?
I was having trouble modeling the dual wield numbers on paper so I just wrote a program to do it.
There are 3 ways enhancement can play out.
A} weapon buff works on offhand and procs mainhand.
B} weapon buff works on offhand and procs on offhand.
C} weapon buff does nothing on offhand :(
The numbers used were
25% crit (probably low)
1300 AP (with bshout str totem and 10% and generic str potion and gear).
Mainhand 3.0 second 66 dps weapon.
Offhand 2.0 66 dps weapon.
Windfury applied to both weapons.
Option A yields.
47 main hand swings 35 offhand swings per minute.
Option B yields.
33 main hand swings 50 offhand swings per minute.
Option C yields.
33 main hand swings 35 offhand swings per minute.
Add 3 stormstrikes per minute is 10 bonus attacks for both.
So with no shocks just stormstrike spam
A = 50 mh attacks 38 offhand attacks. ~650 dps.
B = 36 mh attacks 53 offhand attacks. ~550 dps.
C = 36 mh attacks 38 offhand attacks. ~500 dps.
So the devil is in the details for dw shaman. Maybe we can squeeze the info out of a cm on the forums in the next month or so. Also I ran my simulator out to 6000 seconds and the longest the group ever went without the +10% ap buff roughly 3 seconds and it was quite rare for a shaman to go 10 seconds without landing a crit even at the meager 25% crit used in my sim.
If the shaman used earthshock they could easily get 150 dps over what is listed but they would also get aggro and die.
Also assuming the dw shaman leaves the ss charges up for the elemental shaman...
I think with generic raid buffs, mana spring, BoW, JoW, mageblood, +40mp5 elemental talent, +60 from gear
An elemental shaman should be able to get around 650-750 +damage at level 70 and pretty much spam lb rank 10 for a long time with very minor consumable usage. The end result with stormstrike almost always up would be in the neighborhood of 700 dps while also helping out the rolling ignites with their new toy totem.
So an enhancement shaman in all likelihood will justify their raid spot from a dps perspective. Especially if there is an elemental shaman to cash in on the stormstrikes.
Earthen Shield is definitely a healing lightning shield that is targetable I do not think that is up for debate. Like most things for us in the expansion we do not have enough information to act. If it returns a static amount and does not scale with gear it will probably be good for a few months and then be awful for years like manatide was. If it returns a % of damage taken that would be pretty cool and scale with the encounters.
I am underwhelmed with earthen shield in pvp though as it will have next to no use at all. Both sides will be quite aware what the guy with the greenball spinning around him is buffed and that buff will get purged/dispelled immediately and 600 mana down the toilet.
That said, I am happy that I am torn over my choices. That means we finally have some worth making. I think that if a raid can field a dw enhancement shaman and an elemental shaman that they will both contribute enough dps to justify their spots. A resto shaman will continue to be good like they are now.
As far as wishes go... I do wish that the chain heal talent was not so prohibitively low in the tree. Just because it is a new talent does not mean it justifies a position in row 8. Comparitively it is very week to other bottom tier talents. I wish that they would shuffle it around to make it more available.
I think Earth shield is just the Holy Word: Shield of shamans. If it scales, I think it will scale pretty poorly like HWS, but well it'll still scale a bit, and at least tanks won't have to click it off when a zealous shaman will cast it before engaging on a mob that doesn't hit hard enough ^^
It'll be interesting what the Earth elemental totem thing do too, the description is pretty vague.
I think Earth shield is just the Holy Word: Shield of shamans. If it scales, I think it will scale pretty poorly like HWS, but well it'll still scale a bit, and at least tanks won't have to click it off when a zealous shaman will cast it before engaging on a mob that doesn't hit hard enough ^^
It'll be interesting what the Earth elemental totem thing do too, the description is pretty vague.
Yep. I feel like they showed us our talents/abilities but we still do not know much.
-The elementals say 20 min cooldown so presumably they are good but who knows.
-The 41 pt enhancement shaman could be great or could be worthless depending on the proc % which is totally unknown.
-Earthen Shield is mostly unknown.
-41 point Elemental totem is available at level 51. Is that the only rank all the way to 70? 20 second buffs are somewhat underwhelming.
-Shaman weapon buffs on offhand yay or nay?
Also we will really have to see the itemization to know for sure how things will play out.
The shamans in our raid last night were drooling more than my seven month old daughter. It was a sight to behold. I'm very much looking forward to going 41 enhance with the expansion and then switching to a 0/40/21 build at 70. It's really amusing to see all our rogues crying and wanting to switch to a shaman.
The big question for Earthen Shield is whether or not the "this effect can only happen once every few seconds part" applies to the spell interruption portion. If the 30% interrupt resist does indeed stack with the 70% earlier up in the tree and is a full time effect, it's going to take a while to chew through the 10 charges to actually be able to interrupt casting. If it only happens for a second or two when the shield is triggered it isn't so good but it's also not a load of suck either. It may or may not stack with Power Word: Shield also. However it'll make a great pre-pull buff for tanks in any case.
I like the caster +dmg totem for obvious reasons (not the least of which is you take the effect yourself, hi +100 healing). I also like Water Shield, it'll provide some nice mana regen on raids (works out to around 20-25 MP/5 I think?). Of course it probably won't stack with Earthen Shield, and it may be questionably useful on some raid encounters since, well, you have to get hit by something for it to trigger. The summoned Elementals seem like gimmicks. Bloodlust is a yawner.
I think the improvements to each of the talent trees, viewed individually, are great. Every tree got a boost in what it does. Nature's Blessing will be at least 100 dmg for most Shamans, and a talent to make Chain Heal better is long overdue. Dual Wield obviously has some big perks (Lok'amir + Claw of Chrom = pew pew) and the AP buff talent gives Shamans a viable excuse to melee. The Elemental talents aren't quite so great, Lightning Overlol^H^Had is a PVP gimmick but the mana regen talent is great.
The problem is when you try and combine all 3 trees. You are forced to choose between a mana regen talent (which is pretty important considering that Shaman mana regen historically blows goats compared to the other healing classes), or between a talent that gives you 100 or more +dmg or 20% improvement on Chain Heal, which is the numero uno healing spell in a raid situation, and you automatically default Earthen Shield which may prove to be the best talent that Shamans get in TBC. Going 40 enhancement will give a shaman some decent melee damage, but meleeing has its own perils and mail AC and low mitigation isn't up to eating cleave after cleave. Any fights where you can't wade in and bust some skulls you'll be severely limited in your effectiveness. Not to mention that with a few exceptions (high rank PVP gear, Stormcaller's) itemization does not lend itself to being able to both melee with any appreciable DPS or to heal well. This isn't a new issue, Druids have been dealing with it with their tanking gear for ages. It's the curse of the hybrid.
Gurgthock posted yesterday on my knee-jerk reaction that talents are about making choices, and I agree. However, ask any Shaman what they do most of the time on raids. No matter what their answer is, they use mana to do it. Shaman healing is not overly efficient outside of Chain Healing situations (especially without Healing Way), and Shaman DPS is heavily reliant on using mana hand over fist as well (Shocks + Lightning Bolt/Stormstrike). It's for this reason that I don't understand burying Unrelenting Storm so deep in Elemental. Reflection is a 3rd tier talent, as is Meditation. Why do Shamans have their regeneration talent 2 tiers lower?
Originally Posted by CheshireCat
Eh, my nostalgia goggles aren't as good as they used to be.
Dual Wield obviously has some big perks (Lok'amir + Claw of Chrom = pew pew)
Dualwielding for healing or elemental weapons is not viable considering that you will sacrifice either +100 dam/healing or +40 mp5. Not to mention losing 3k armor. A single weapon is not worth it. It would be nice though to get a second oil but still not worth it.
I'm actually surprised at the number of posters who are NOT listing a 41 point talent in enhance or elemental. My guild's shamans are planning on distributing builds across all 3 trees, I'm personally going to go elemental, just trying to decide between a couple of builds because I can't make up my mind between wanting the crit or the hit from the resto tree.
But how could you pass up the Totem of Wrath at 41 elemental? Drop that AND a Wrath of Air totem in a caster group AND pop bloodlust? Holy shit, the DPS would be through the roof. And if you plan on enhancement down to dual wield spec, how could you possibly pass up Shamanistic Rage and a chance to regen mana at an accelerated rate while you melee?
08/28/06, 8:57 PM
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